The bell was a System tone that came from everywhere, and the gold moved before it finished. Jax crossed eleven meters in four strides, faster than the drill's worst estimate, and his first blow arrived where Nox's chest had been half a breath earlier.
The chalk of the court exploded where the blow finally landed instead. Dust fountained off the boards, the crowd's front row flinched as one body, and the duel's opening statement was written in a crater the size of a washbasin.
Nox came out of the sidestep at speed, because standing to admire craters was how spectators were made. The plan said angles, and the plan owned his feet for the next five minutes.
The crowd noise arrived a beat late, the whole rope line catching up to what it had watched. Somewhere in it Vasa's voice called the first ten seconds like a clerk, flat, audible, keeping the count the plan lived on.
